Selina Peake moves from Chicago to a rural Dutch farming area just outside the city to teach in a one room school. As she attempts to fit into the community, she learns about her own strength in adapting to rural life. She marries an uneducated but sweet Dutch farmer named Pervus DeJong and has a son, Dirk, nicknamed “So Big.” She wishes her son to have the same appreciation for the arts and education she has, and although he becomes an architect, his disillusionment with the architectural apprentice system leads him to a career as a successful bond salesman. He later regrets eschewing his architecture career when he meets a beautiful and eccentric artist.

Ferber was not confident in the book’s prospects when it was first published. Nevertheless, it became very popular, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1925, and was later made into three different motion pictures.